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Color bomb team

May 18, 2016

Last week I had the pleasure of working on a super fun project. A client brought an old teak desk. I thought it would work great if we paired it up with a chair I recently got. Both were made in the same time period and from the same materials so I was sure they would look great together.

Before

It wasn’t much to start with. I really wanted to keep the top in natural teak but the scratches in the veneer were too deep to fix. In this case, paint was the only option. The chair situation was very similar. Big chunks of veneer were missing from the back so I decided to fill them, sand it and paint it.

The original plan was to paint it cobalt blue. I took a trip to the local fabric store to find something appropriate for the chair seat, but there was nothing that would go with my previously-planned cobalt theme. Change of plans!

I like to find my inspiration in the papers and fabrics I use, and that’s what I did on this project as well. The client suggested that we go with turquoise instead of cobalt, and from there we had a plan!

Ready to work

The first step Is usually sanding the surface down. I used a sanding machine for the flat parts of the desk, but the chair needed to be sanded by hand. Then I primed all the parts that were supposed to be painted.

Two layers of color later, the desk and chair were almost ready. The wooden parts were treated with mineral oil. The brass “socks” on the chair’s legs were polished. To make both pieces seem like parts of a set, I spray painted the golden “socks” on the desk’s legs as well.

Fabric

I thought It would be nice to use the leftover fabric to line the insides of the drawers. I needed to cut it to the exact size first and then glue it with decoupage glue. The sides of the drawers were also painted using the colors from the fabrics pattern. Multicolor and random.

All in all I think It came out pretty cool. Deep turquoise and a fun modern patter plus the teak accents made it look contemporary and fresh.